The children in Mataje want to be like ‘Guacho’
Ecuadornews:
The Mataje children aspire to be elders as alias ‘Guacho’, who is attributed the kidnapping and murder of a press team from El Comercio, revealed an International Journalism Mission.
The Colombian journalist Herbin Hoyos, who along with the Spanish Salud Hernández, led this mission (MPIH) that moved to the conflict zone, on the border with Colombia. On Tuesday, April 24, they announced that in that town the house of ‘Guacho”s mother is a symbol of opulence, which is why children dream of being like him.
“The mother’s house stands out in a structure construction that goes from one street to the other and has become a symbol and that’s why when children ask them what they want to be when they grow up they respond that they want to be like ‘Guacho'” , said Hoyos when describing the situation of that parish.
Located in San Lorenzo, in the province of Esmeraldas, it has been the target, during the last months, of attacks with explosives, which left four Ecuadorian soldiers dead and some thirty wounded; in addition to the recent kidnappings of a journalistic team -then murdered- he and the most recent of a couple of civilians.
Hoyos said that Walter Patricio Arizala -name of the dissident of the FARC, who is accused of the deterioration of security in the border area- has moved to his free will for a long time in the area, and explained that “in moments of tranquility He arrived with markets, with money, with the people who accompanied him and it was where the people lived the “francachela” and the “feast”.
He stressed that “the lack of the State has been constant and that there has moved with all freedom drug trafficking and those who inhabit the region have no choice but to live together or serve as helpers, cooperators with drug trafficking networks.”
The journalist pointed to the Colombian government and accused him of “leaving Ecuador alone in this fight”, and demanded that he exercise greater responsibility in this border, where the Mataje river is the geographic limit.
He also confirmed “the reason to the Ecuadorian State, when they always argued that the journalists were not in Ecuador, that they had been transferred to Colombian territory.”
And he argued that hypothesis is enough to see on the ground that 200 meters from the village you can cross the border, and what remains from there on the Colombian side is impregnable jungle.
He suggested that “very probably” the workers’ bodies of the Quito newspaper, which have not yet been delivered by the captors, “may be very close to Mataje on the Colombian side.
He made these assessments based on formal and informal sources and according to the latter, the MPIH has established that up to 60 tons of cocaine can be moved in the area in the production stages.
To develop the activity, he remarked, the posters have no presence of the State, without the need to bribe authorities or confront them, which makes the region an attractive place for the cartels that traffic, like the Mexicans and who help each other on the drug that control their passage to Ecuador. (I)
Source: http://www.expreso.ec/actualidad/ecuador-mataje-ninos-admiracion-guacho-DA2147588